[App Fridays] Now 10Times easy to discover events in your location

Attending events, conferences and interacting with speakers and fellow attendees is a good way to learn about your area of interest and also network and build life-long friendships. For some people registering for an event, finding the venue, networking at the event etc become too complex and they are not able to reap benefits from the whole exercise. 10times aims to address this pain point:

What is it?

10times is an event discovery platform that aims to provide end-to-end information about tradeshows, events, workshops and conferences. The goal is to make it easier for users to find information about events near them, attend and connect with people there.

The app detects the user’s location and discovers events around that place. Users can choose their industry to curate relevant events based on their interest. They can then register, send a request to attend the event and also see who else is attending the event in the ‘Visitors List’ and connect with them.

Other features include:

- Check pricing and event fees.

- Access speaker information and event agenda.

- View map and get directions to venue.

- Set reminder on their phones.

- Filter results in accordance with industry, location, and date.

The team claims that the platform has about 65,000 live upcoming events worldwide, has about two million business inquiries generated for their clients, 172 countries hosting events on their platform and1,00,000 connections requests.

Team

The idea was conceived by Mayank Chowdhary with a conviction that the business event space was in need of a revamp. The journey of 10Times started in January 2014 and over the past one year it has grown to a team of 30+ individuals. In January 2015, Atul Todi came onboard as a co-founder. He was previously running his own startup that was incubated at IIT Kanpur and has a background in consumer research from Purdue University. Having attended tradeshows and conferences in the US, he understood the potential in the B2B events space and decided to join 10Times.

While 10Times also has a web presence, it is aiming to grow its mobile adoption to provide peopleon the move with a better user experience. For marketing, the team mainly relies on social media, word of mouth and collaboration with event organisers.They also tie-up with industry specific media channels, both print and online media, to reach their targeted audience.While the three key players in the events business are organizers, visitors and exhibitors or speakers, 10Times business model revolves around organizers and they monetise through multiple sources which include: a Visitor Management System, where they track registered users, send timely event updates and manage contacts; Event Analytics and Insights where they track demographic details about the attendees, provide insights about the number of attendees, connections made and leads generated from an event; Traffic and Promotion, they help organizers drive traffic and promote their brand on their platform which they claim receives about three million page views per month.

The features of the app are self-explanatory and it provides a nice UI and UX. Some of the features such as ‘Set Reminders’, ‘Invite friends’ and ‘Visitors’ look promising. One of the USPs for me was that users could connect with other attendees of a particular event through the app before the event. Setting reminders and adding the map within the app are also nice features to have.

What could be improved?

It would be beneficial if users could filter events based on additional filters such as price. For example, a user may want to discover events nearby that are free or within certain price ranges.

The search filters and results could be improved. With my location settings (GPS) turned on and location set to Bangalore, India, I searched for events related to ‘Mobile Apps’. Instead of showing ‘No event available in your area’ or the like, it showed two events in Frankfurt and Berlin.

YS verdict

On the whole despite a few minor flaws, the app does make it easier for people who want to attend events find the required information and connect with people. It will be interesting to see how they scale and add more events on their platform.